Story of Frozen Reveals Movie Secrets " Which Beloved Song Was Almost Cut?

Unlike Arendelle, the real world is still under Elsa's spell. Fortunately, Frozen fans don't have to "Let It Go" quite yet. ABC will air its one-hour special ...

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By TV Guide

Geneseo Republic - Geneseo, IL

By TV Guide

Posted Aug. 28, 2014 at 12:01 AM
Updated Aug 28, 2014 at 6:20 PM

By TV Guide

Posted Aug. 28, 2014 at 12:01 AM
Updated Aug 28, 2014 at 6:20 PM

Unlike Arendelle, the real world is still under Elsa's spell.

Fortunately, Frozen fans don't have to "Let It Go" quite yet. ABC will air its one-hour special The Story of Frozen: Making an Animated Classic on Tuesday at 8/7c to give an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the movie magic required to make Frozen the worldwide phenomenon it is today. Moviegoers fell in love with the tale of two sisters -- the powerful and potentially dangerous Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) and the plucky and loyal Anna (Kristen Bell) -- who are willing to sacrifice for the good of their kingdom Arendelle and are aided by iceman Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer Sven and daydreaming snowman Olaf (Josh Gad).

"It's the first time that a lot of the creative team has gotten back together to really think about all that's happened since the movie released," Frozen producer Peter Del Vecho tells TVGuide.com. "There will be interviews with John Lasseter, myself, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee the directors, our art director Michael Giamo, Robert and Kristen Lopez who wrote the music. The music team will talk about technology and really a lot of the things that went into making Frozen the film it became.

"It's not currently on any of the DVDs," he continues. "That's what I think is what makes the special interesting is we go into a little bit more depth, and people get a chance to hear from the filmmakers themselves. A lot of questions they might have might get answered."

Page 2 of 4 - See what research the crew did to learn how to animate snow in this sneak peek clip:

Check out more movie secrets and Del Vecho's reflections on many more things Frozen -- such as the chances for a sequel -- below:

Frozen 2? "Certainly you can't go on the Internet without that question coming up," he says. "Right now, it's too early for us to talk anything about that. What we have talked about is a Broadway show, which is under development. There's no specific timeline for that. Jen will be involved in that, Chris will be involved. It'll get produced from our theatrical unit. That's the next logical step for the project."

Frozen on Once Upon a Time"We met with the directors and the writers, not to talk about what they were going to do, but to talk about the characters and who they were -- things they do or don't do," Del Vecho explains. "We just want them to remain who they are, so they all have developed personalities, and we don't want them to create situations that we feel they wouldn't get into. So it's really about understanding who the characters are and staying true to that."

Flipping the script "Frozen is not quite what you expect a Disney fairy tale to be," Del Vecho observes. "We didn't mock the tropes, but we did turn them on their head: true love's kiss, love at first sight, Prince Charming."

Tress for success Del Vecho explains, "John Lasseter wanted us to create hair that would inspire everyone to want to have hair like that for both Anna and Elsa. Elsa really has two different hair styles because there's coronation Elsa and post-"Let It Go" Elsa. Not only did we have our own designers working on it but we also brought in hair designer Danilo who does a lot of hair designs for the stars and for movies. He came in and worked with us for a few days on really exploring assymetricality in hair design. He really was very influential to us in what ultimately we came up with."

Page 3 of 4 - Sister actress "For Anna and Elsa, we probably looked at 50 to a 100 people for each role," he reveals. "What we love about Kristen is that we didn't know she had such a marvelous singing voice, but we also loved was the energy and enthusiasm and brightness in her voice and how much fun she brought to the character. We fell in love with that and her pretty much when she auditioned, but certainly over the course of all the recording sessions."

The iceman speaketh "At the time, the character he was auditioning for we thought was a guy who would be a rough mountain man and not talk a whole lot, a man of few words," Del Vecho says. "But Jonathan came in and he has such a charming voice, and we all in the booth when listening to his audition realized boy, we're missing something by not having a great voice that people can relate to and have fun with. He captured our imagination by playing the role slightly differently than we had imagined."

"Let It Go" Del Vecho says, "That song gave us the theme of the movie, which was 'love versus fear,' where Elsa is ruled by fear, and Anna is positive and believes in everyone, believes in herself and doesn't let anything get in her way... We ended up rewriting that entire movie so that every character would reflect that theme. So Olaf represents innocent love, Hans represents that love at first sight, there's true love's kiss, and Kristoff represents that love that develops over time once you get to know someone.

"Originally when we first started the movie, we thought that Elsa would be the villain, but we realized the problem with that is that we had seen it before and it didn't really interest us," he continues. "Once we made them sisters and got this theme, then suddenly we could build the character and something that felt universal and meaningful. So not only was it a powerful song in and of itself, it really helped us understand who Elsa was. By understanding who Elsa was, she became real and relatable."

Disney princess legacy "When we started off the movie, Anna and Elsa weren't princesses. It was a fairy tale, and over the evolution of the movie, we decided to make them sisters once Elsa wasn't a true villain," he says. "The reason we made them princesses was really to raise the stakes for Anna because she was caught between saving her sister and helping her kingdom, which she loved. But now that the movie is out, I love watching Anna and Elsa walk around some of the [Disney theme] parks with everyone running up to them and being so excited, waiting in line for four or five hours to see them. You know that you've created very special characters who are going to live on for a long, long time."

Fan reaction "I think what surprised us the most was how many people so quickly started putting up their own versions of the songs on YouTube," Del Vecho says. "And it's a big variety of people, it's just been overwhelming. It's hard to pick one favorite right at this moment, but I think the most surprising one to me were the U.S. Marines cheering at Elsa's transformation at the end of 'Let It Go.' I didn't expect to see them so enthralled with the movie."

What's your favorite character or moment in Frozen? What does the film mean to you?

The Story of Frozen: Making an Animated Classic airs Tuesday at 8/7c on ABC.